Client: Make-A-Wish
Services: Concept, production, design & mediadistribution
Year: 2019-2020
Make-A-Wish Influwensers
Transform Make-a-Wish into a storytelling platform
Amadi’s dream is to become a police officer, Mila wants to meet her hero Jochem Myjer and Bas is a huge Star Wars fan. Three children who all have a wish. In collaboration with Make-A-Wish, we help to turn their dreams into a reality and document the entire Wish Journey.
For the past 30 years, Make-A-Wish has been fulfilling the wishes of children with life-threatening illnesses. They want to show millennials that their goal is not simply to organise a ‘fun day’, but to be involved in a longer process: the Wish Journey. This is the entire process from defining the wish to the day when they get to live out their dreams. In the meantime the children receive assignments which they have to take full control over, something they don’t have over their illness and treatment. The result of this method has been recognized as very efficient since it gives a positive boost to the child and their family.
The target audience leads a busy life, both online as offline which is why we decided to involve them in the extraordinary stories of the Make-A-Wish. This is why we chose Instagram as the main communication channel. Before we start to document the Wish Journey we would like to get to know the children and their families to build a relationship with them. This is essential to capture their stories. Since we cannot physically be there every step of the way, we have appointed an ambassador within the family who films all the ‘behind the scenes’ material. This ensures that we have a pure and honest view of the lives of the children. During this project we documented the Wish Journeys of three children, which we post on the Instagram of Make-A-Wish. You can view these posts as a documentary which has been cut up. Each post tells a short story and all the posts together provide complete picture of the entire Wish Journeys. The Instagram stories were used to show behind the scenes footage of the children at home. They also show you how the assignments the children received play out.
Minouche de Graaf
Make-A-Wish
“It is very special to see that our followers on Instagram are so involved in the Wish Journeys of the children.”
The team of Maak thinks of this as a very special and memorable project. Maak’s creative Justin Boot says: “It is extraordinary to see how excited the children are for their Wish-day, but also how they tell their story to the world. I can remember when Mila said: “When everyone sees me on Instagram they might understand me better”. For me, the most memorable post from the entire series is where Niels, the father of Bas, shares an anecdote of how Bas handles his illness. That has become a mini-documentary of 1 minute. However, all posts together provide a clear overview of the lives of these families. Personally, I gave a lot to this project, but it is all worth it when you see the happy faces of these little Influwensers”.
